time. Johnson said, "Charles Wesley, who is a much more stationary man, does not believe the story. am sorry John did not take more pains to inquire into the evidence for it."

BOSWELL AND JOHN WESLEY.

BOSWELL wished to be introduced

I

to Wesley, and Johnson wrote this letter: "Sir, Mr. Boswell, a gentleman who has been long known to me, is desirous of being known to you, and has asked this recommendation, which I give him with great willingness, because I think it very much to be wished that worthy and religious men should be acquainted with each other. I am, sir, your humble servant, Samuel Johnson." Mr. Wesley was, in the course of his ministry, then at Edinburgh (May, 1779), and on this letter being presented, received Boswell very politely. Boswell's wish for the introduction was chiefly to ask about the Newcastle-onTyne ghost story!

GHOSTS.

TALKING of ghosts, he said, “It

is wonderful that five thousand

years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it."

As

THE COCK LANE GHOST.

S the general opinion is that Johnson was weakly credulous on this subject, it may be well to state his real opinions. Churchill, in his satirical poem, "The Ghost," made unworthy use of the credulity ascribed to Johnson, and under the name of Pomposo represented him as one of the chief believers in the celebrated Cock Lane ghost. Whereas Johnson was one of the chief detectors of the imposture, along with Dr. Douglas, the Bishop

of Salisbury; and he wrote an account of the deception in the newspapers, and in the Gentleman's Magazine.

APPARITIONS POSSIBLE.

HE admitted that all such questions were fit subjects for inquiry and of testimony. He said "he knew one friend, who was an honest and sensible man, who told him he had seen a ghost -old Mr. Edward Cave, the printer, at St. John's Gate. You have not only the general report and belief, but you have many voluntary solemn confessions." He discussed the subject more fully in "Rasselas," and in the "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides."

FANCY AND FACT AS TO GHOSTS.

THE following statement appears in

a conversation with Boswell. He said, "I make a distinction between what a man may experience by mere strength of his imagination, and what

imagination cannot possibly produce. Thus, suppose I should think that I saw a form, and heard a voice say, 'Johnson, you are a very wicked fellow, and unless you repent you will certainly be punished,' my own unworthiness is so deeply impressed on my mind, that I might imagine I thus saw and heard, and therefore I should not believe that an external communication had been made to me. But if a form should appear, and a voice should tell me that a particular man had died at a particular place and a particular hour, a fact which I had no apprehension of, nor any means of knowing, and this fact, with all its circumstances, should afterwards be unquestionably proved, I should in that case be persuaded that I had supernatural intelligence imparted to me."

He said of apparitions, "A total disbelief of them is adverse to the opinion of the existence of the soul between death and the last day; the

question simply is, whether departed spirits ever have the power of making themselves perceptible to us. A man who thinks he has seen an арраrition can only be convinced himself; his authority will not convince another; and his conviction, if rational, must be founded on being told something which cannot be known but by supernatural means."

**

On this occasion Johnson discoursed on the curious phenomenon of persons being called, that is, hearing one's name pronounced by the voice of a known person at a great distance, far beyond the possibility of being actually heard. The Doctor said that "one day at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly call Sam. She was then at Lichfield, but nothing came of it." Cases are frequently mentioned of such calls, though not so frequently as of apparitions to the sight. Boswell told of a